Kari Carney is wrapping up her first year as executive director of 1000 Friends of Iowa, an 18-year-old nonprofit that is focused on land use education. The organization follows a range of issues concerning development, including urban sprawl, stormwater, water quality and sustainable development. Carney is a longtime community organizer. To get a measure of her concern over land use issues, just consider that she has been among the leading voices in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline that is snaking its way across Iowa from North Dakota and headed to Illinois. Land acquisition for the pipeline is an example of abuse of eminent domain, she said. 1000 Friends of Iowa established a Best Development Awards program in 2001 to showcase projects and programs that represent smart growth and sustainability efforts by cities, businesses, organizations and individuals. The awards include stormwater management, new commercial and mixed-use projects. The program was expanded this year with awards for renewable energy, complete streets/transportation and placemaking/green space. 

What brought you to 1000 Friends of Iowa?
I care pretty deeply about land use. My family were farmers; part of my grandparents’ farm got eaten up by urban sprawl and highway development. I have a small, kind of hobby farm; I raise sheep. 

Does 1000 Friends of Iowa focus on development of rural lands?
Not exclusively. What we are focused on kind of generally is land use, transportation, sustainable development and climate change, especially how it relates to land use. Our best development awards are a good example of we didn’t just want to fight against stuff. We really wanted to acknowledge the good things that were happening and use those as models for other people and really find examples that illustrate how sustainable development using smart growth principles and doing the right thing actually is a real economic boost for communities, more so than urban sprawl. 

Are you paying close attention to the development boom in downtown Des Moines?
I would say (Mayor Frank Cownie) really does want sustainable development. We — along with a couple of other groups; we call ourselves the Des Moines Climate Action Coalition — were successful recently in getting the City Council to add a priority into their strategic plan to add a citizens sustainability task force, which will be an addition to some of these other groups. With that we are going to be working with Laura Graham out of the city manager’s office, who also is the sustainability person, to really help figure out how to implement the star community certification. One of the goals is for the city of Des Moines to be a four-star certified community, which we think is the right direction to go. But in addition, the city of Des Moines is redoing its zoning code. I sat in on a consultant’s meeting, and I really like what I heard. We really liked what they were talking about. In 2006, 1000 Friends of Iowa got an EPA grant to audit the Des Moines metropolitan … and look at whether community ordinances help or hinder smart growth. So we were auditing zoning codes to look at where they have certain things based on smart growth principles, so we would like to move forward, hoping that Des Moines will adopt all of them. For the most part, the city of Des Moines had fairly good code. … It lacked some clarity and it was more in how it got implemented. We would like to see some tightening up. We think what we heard from the consultant is a really good direction to go to add more clarity and to have some specific regulations so that the zoning commissioners can have the ability to say this doesn’t fit. 

Is there a city in Iowa that stands out as an example of responsible land use?
There are a lot of cities and towns in Iowa that are doing some really good things, and I’m really encouraged at how well different communities are doing some things. But all of the communities have more work to be done. Bloomfield, with setting the renewable energy goal … we’re excited about that. There are exciting things happening in Fairfield, Dubuque, Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, so there are a lot of communities, even a lot of smaller communities, that are trying to figure out how to do things better. Elkader’s whitewater park, an award winner from last year, is a really great example of what a small community can do to try to change their community around to not only make their community more economically viable and relevant, but also do things that are good for the environment in the long run.